Curating art, narrating reality.
A place where creativity and research meet.
Here are our projects:
Untouched (2022) by Martina Menegon is the video presented within the program FILTRO,edition of DIGITAL VIDEO WALL, an annual project structured in thematic chapters, aimed at promoting the dissemination and experimentation of digital art.
The sixth screening is dedicated to the artwork Untouched (2022) by Martina Menegon: the video shows a series of 3D Scan-Selfies from different angles where the eyes can move around and discover this digital sculpture in its details and different aspects. Untouchedis a project presented as an online virtual sculpture with Augmented Reality capability (on compatible mobile). The viewer is absorbed in these recordings of the artist herself, who is now dematerialized: the image is very close to a pictorial representation in which the digital colors are embedded together to build a tridimensional sculpture.
Martina Menegon is an artist working predominantly with Interactive and Extended Reality Art. In her works, Martina creates intimate and complex assemblages of physical and virtual elements that explore the contemporary self and its phygital corporeality. Untouched can be defined within this practice: showing her personal portrait, the artist allows the viewer to enter in her personal and intimate sphere. Menegon breaks her real image and recreates it in digital: this operation reflects on the daily action of representation of the self inside the virtual realities.
She experiments with the uncanny and the grotesque, the self and the body and the dialogue between physical and virtual realities, to create disorienting experiences that become perceivable despite their virtual nature. “Fragmentation is the truth of existence”: these words from Carolyn J. Dean well describe the intimacy inherent in the creative process of Martina Menegon. The 3D Scanning is meant as an extremely personal journey in which the artist can explore her multiple digital selves and achieve a deep understanding of her virtual identities. With Untouched,the virtual three-dimensional selfies propose a new authentic and perceivable digital body, immobile yet constantly performing.
Untouched|Martina Menegon
METRONOM| Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
Uncanny Valley (2020) by Stacie Ant is the video presented within the program FILTRO,edition of DIGITAL VIDEO WALL, an annual project structured in thematic chapters, aimed at promoting the dissemination and experimentation of digital art.
Creating a film montage and a narrative whose protagonists are three characters and their respective avatars, Ant comments on the development of projects around the metaverse and augmented reality. The consequences of these developments are linked to the so-called toxic positivity trends, which influence the representation of the self in the online sphere. The three characters, who live a degraded and grotesque everyday life, find in their digital counterpart an extremization of the parameters of beauty and behavior.
Stacie Ant’s practice is often characterized by a dark humor with which the artist criticizes the male-gaze and the contemporary patriarchal system towards the female body with the aim of emancipating female identity and sexuality, but always leaving space for irony: using 3D software and animations, the artist creates characters, often female, characterized by a strong aesthetic with semi-alien futuristic features, favoring a vaporwave style. In fact, his proximity to the Berlin club culture is fundamental in the production of Ant’s works, which strongly influences the characterization of her characters. Club culture is also present in the artist’s works in the scenographic choices and in the recreation of the environments, with particular attention to music which, together with other influences, define the artist’s aesthetics and planning. “My work is strongly sex-positive, queer, fetish and playful. I am also inspired by auteur cinema and alternative fashion, as well as everyday life – the way I see the world or the way I want to see the world. ”
Uncanny Valley was originally commissioned by the musician Mr Eff but then the project developed in an attempt to represent a socio-digital condition not as absurd and distant as it seems to be. The protagonists, sad in their monotony and squalor, connect to an exoskeleton equipped with a VR viewer and log into a virtual world where they can be anyone and take on the appearance they want. In the exaggeration of plastic perfection, characters can live the life of their dreams and play the best version of themselves, at least until they disconnect from the VR set. In this dystopian vision Ant shows us what our future could be in the Metaverse: between the anguish and disappointment of not adhering with one’s real image to the aesthetic standards imposed by society and the tension towards a surgically perfect version of the self, Uncanny Valley shows the most controversial and disturbing aspects of sociality, between the real and the digital dimension.
Uncanny Valley|Stacie Ant
METRONOM| Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
Chun-Li (2017) by Cassie McQuater is the video presented within the program FILTRO,edition of DIGITAL VIDEO WALL curated by Gemma Fantacci. The program is an artistic exploration of the outcomes of the researches of five international artists, whose practice is centered on the possibilities offered by digital technologies. FILTRO is conceived in its twofold meaning of device that allows the implementation of modifications, real or virtual, and of lens through which we experience an altered version of reality.
Chun-Li (2017) is one of the levels of a more extensive work, the browser-based video game Black Room: the latter is a narrative game centered on an insomniac person who, falling asleep on his computer, starts a poetic journey that moves within different settings. in one of these settings is possible to meet Chun-Li, character of Street Fighter II and first first female fighter within video game history.
Chun-Li is not controlled but becomes the master of her own destiny in a continuous performance in which she reclaims possession of her actions and movements, free from any kind of external intervention. Cassie McQuater’s practice is inscribed in net art and her work stands at the intersection of new media and video games to examine the practices of objectification of the female body in today’s media landscape, subverting the logic of appropriation of the female body subjected to the so-called male gaze, a chauvinist and often misogynistic glance.
It is also possible to watch the video online but to be able to access the URL of the game it is necessary to be inside a chain of sharing from player to player, Where the URL is copied and pasted: the video game becomes a possibility of an intimate exchange. Within the several settings, different protagonists follow one another in a fantasy and dreamlike environment where they can rediscover a new degree of independence.
Chun-li|Cassie Mcquater
METRONOM| Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
“Under[w]he(a)re” (2020) by Luca Miranda is the video presented within the program FILTRO, the third edition of DIGITAL VIDEO WALL curated by Gemma Fantacci. The program is an artistic exploration of the outcomes of the researches of five international artists, whose practice is centered on the possibilities offered by digital technologies. FILTRO is conceived in its twofold meaning of device that allows the implementation of modifications, real or virtual, and of lens through which we experience an altered version of reality.
“Under[w]he(a)re” (digital video, 2020) was created within the video game Assassin’s Creed: Unity (2014), an open world set during the French Revolution. Luca Miranda’s avatar sneaks under the skirt of about 100 bridesmaids, exhibited virtually and rhetorically, discovering the same taste in dressing. In a context of cultural, social and economic differences, the appeal of monopoly capitalism is still alive.
The artist documents his movement in the virtual dimension through photography and video: the different items of underwear of the female characters, which almost seem to be part of an advertisement, represent a society virtually real and are able to highlight an anthropological potential of everyday reality. NPCs have the quality of being subject to capitalist dynamics, which are subject to the choices of game designers and therefore to the dominant dynamics inside society. The various terms and themes that “Under[w]he(a)re” takes into analysis fall into a broken and assembled ways, this is also visible in the title itself, which wants to mix and superimpose different references to objects, places and temporal dimensions, messing up the plane of the real and virtual.
Miranda’s research is focused on the relationship between reality and simulation and consequently on historical and political rhetoric: the area of interest is video games intended as a critical tool to highlight the internal contradictions and paradoxes of contemporary media culture. “Under[w]he(a)re“ fits into the artist’s practice who, working with machinima and in-game photography, pushes himself towards an experimentation of the traditional video techniques. The game mechanics, the immersion in a virtual reality and the identification with the agents of this new dimension are the areas and concepts that Miranda explores, thus reducing the distance between the two realities and highlighting the increasingly interpenetrating similarity between the two.
Underw[h]e(a)re|Luca Miranda
METRONOM| Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
Storm and Stress (2021) by Carson Lynn is the video presented by FILTRO, edition of DIGITAL VIDEO WALL curated by Gemma Fantacci. The program proposes a survey in the artistic field of the research results of five international artists on the tools offered by digital. FILTRO (filter) is intended in its double meaning: as a device that allows real or virtual changes to be made, and as a lens through which we experience an altered vision of reality.
The screening is dedicated to Storm and Stress, Carson Lynn’s video in which the artist uses digital contents and dimensions to propose a queer reinterpretation of heterocentric gaming systems and relation with the digital landscape. Carson Lynn works with Machinima – non-interactive audiovisual production produced with video games – in order to deconstruct and recontextualize the interactive and virtual spaces of video games and stereotypes belonging to videogame culture. The avatar used by the artist abandons the armed clash with the other characters, thus subverting the heteronormative binary system typical of many video games, moreover he dedicates himself to the observation of the landscape that surrounds him, recalling that type of predisposition to the landscape which characterized the artistic current of Romanticism.
Storm and Stress is the result of Lot Residency # 07 project, curated by Silicon Valet on their Instagram page, in August 2020. Storm and Stress was created within the video games series Destiny, in which the artist refuses to engage into gunfight with other players to embark on a personal journey within the natural landscape of the game. Influenced by the work of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich and the proto-romantic movement Sturm und Drang (1760-1780), Carson Lynn takes advantage of a series of exploits within the two chapters of the series to depart from the battlefield and the frequently homophobic and chauvinistic dynamics of the online community to freely explore the video game landscape. Inside this new dimension discovered by the artist is now possible to embark on a new quest of personal experimentation in which he can express himself and «be as queer as he wishes».
Storm and Stress|Carson Lynn
METRONOM| Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
Ain’t Free (2020) by Georgie Roxby Smith is the video presented inside the program of FILTRO, edition of DIGITAL VIDEO WALL curated by Gemma Fantacci. The program proposes a survey in the artistic field of the research results of five international artists on the tools offered by digital. FILTRO (filter) is intended in its double meaning: as a device that allows real or virtual changes to be made, and as a lens through which we experience an altered vision of reality.
For this chapter of Digital Video Wall Georgie Roxby Smith presents Ain’t Free, a video that explores the interactions between the physical and virtual worlds with a particular focus on gender representation and the violence of video games, especially concerning the figure of women, on screen and inside online communities. In Ain’t Free the artist reveals the farce that lurks in the world of online video games: taking Second Life as a field of investigation and action, the Australian artist explores the carnival emptiness of unbridled capitalism and the desire to present the best version of oneself and of one’s life. This brings the various players to an incessant purchase and to a constant modification of their physical characteristics. The offline self finds itself trapped in its own ego and embalmed in the infinite loop of a boorish capitalism that does not seem to have an end.
Ain’t Free|Georgie Roxby Smith
METRONOM| Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
